Respite from black and white

Under the bright sky, the shadows in the white snow look blue, but on a dull day almost everything in our local landscape is monochrome. By the seventh or eighth week of winter you start to long for a splash of colour to liven up the grayscale, but if you look carefully there is colour to be found on our river bank, in these dried up grasses, for example.

Further on, you can let your eyes feast on the willow tree on the opposite bank, its twigs a smudge of ochre brown. In the spring, the buds on willow trees will be the first to break into leaf, when we can look forward to the relief of seeing a hint of green in the same spot.

Seen from across the river, the low wall in this photo, painted green, used to be the edge of a public swimming pool (that contained river water). The swimming pool has been gone for years; it's where the New Edinburgh Park tennis courts are now.

Walking on water

The path across the river

About once a year I dare myself to walk across the Rideau River from the Bordeleau Park to the park in New Edinburgh without using a bridge; I did this yesterday, in the afternoon sunshine, following a winding trail of footprints in the snow that covers the river ice.

My walk bore no similarity whatsoever to Liquid Mountaineering, a recording of which has 8-and-a-half million hits on YouTube, but which has turned out to be a hoax: click here to watch. (No, I shan't be trying this in Ottawa when the ice melts.)

Snowmobile tracks on the Ottawa

Ottawa River, winter of 2008

Click on this aerial shot to enlarge it; the snowmobile tracks are visible. Behind the river the Eardley Escarpment can be seen as well, near Luskville (QC) on Highway 148.

Ice fishing

On the weather network nowadays, an online "gallery" of people's uploaded, weather-related photos can be accessed. Today someone posted pictures of the ice-fishing (pêche sur glace) taking place at the otherwise deserted Alymer Marina on the Ottawa River, an scene typical of January in our region. It must be one of the most uncomfortable sports out there, but I dare say that's part of the attraction. All down the Ottawa River are clusters of ice-fishing huts, veritable villages which materialize for a few weeks only to disappear again when the thaw threatens, sometimes with tragic consequences. Last year in March a fisherman left it too late to drive out across the ice and fetch his hut to shore.

Maple Island

I mentioned Maple Island in the post below. This is a pleasant spot to retire from the crowds in summer and sit on the bank under the trees. Beavers, muskrats, turtles, herons and swans also appreciate the relative privacy of its banks and last summer a family of geese with thirteen goslings chose to make a home there for a while.

If you walk to the tip of the small island you'll find a monument that commemorates the welcome of some 40,000 Hungarian immigrants who came to Canada at the time of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. I have met a few of them. The monument has only stood on the island for the last four years or so, however.

Seeing the light

Well layered in wraps—or should I say, well wrapped in layers?—we walked across the Minto Bridges to New Edinburgh, at minus twenty-something degrees C around 10 o'clock last night, noticing the plumes of steam rising from chimneys and water pipe vents (manhole covers) in the road, but not from the solid Rideau River. The coming snow clouds were beginning to obscure the sky and gather on the south eastern horizon so that they reflected colour from the city lights. Moving away from the street lamps and looking straight up from Maple Island, though, we saw mysterious bright streaks like the reflection from laser beams, but broader, which I'm sure weren't wisps of under-lit cirrus cloud but a faint manifestation of the Northern Lights.

On the Space Weather website I see that someone in Sweden noticed the aurora last night as well, so perhaps we weren't imagining it. On previous occasions we've seen something similar over the riverside parks, beams of light like the struts of a dome, coming and going and tending to converge overhead.

When I came in I had frost all over my eyelashes.

Cold!

The weather report for Ottawa this morning is clear, with a temperature of minus 25ºC which "feels like" minus 39ºC, because of the 30kph wind. In these conditions any exposed human skin will freeze in 10 minutes, so best be careful. We did go out for a walk last night, thoroughly covered in layers, to see the full moon lightly veiled in clouds over the Rideau River.

For this morning's post I found a cold looking view of the Ottawa River's north bank in January 2009 (very similar to now). The steam rises from a lumber factory on the Quebec side. A little "Arctic Smoke" as mentioned in my last post is visible, rising from a patch of open water in the river.

Along the Ottawa River Parkway

I drove to a house on Island Park Drive this morning along the Ottawa River Parkway, Ottawa's most scenic road. In the summer plenty of use is made of the parallel bike trail which in winter is used by walkers and skiers. There's a view of the Ottawa River all the way along this route and not far beyond the Canada War Museum an open stretch of water; even at the coldest times of year from the Deschênes Rapids (near the Britannia Yacht Club) to the Remic Rapids it doesn't freeze. Today because of the fine weather the fast moving water was a deep blue. The whitewater paddling community likes this stretch, or will like it when the weather warms up a bit.

During the next few days and nights with the air temperature dropping to minus 26º or 27ºC, it's likely that swirls of fog ("Arctic smoke") will be seen forming on this part of the river. It's a beautiful, mysterious sight, especially in the early mornings.

Parallel blog

Shawn Collier created a similar blog to this one, I see, but hasn't updated it since June 2008; it is part of The Rideau Community Website, www.therideau.com.

Eyesore or enhancement?

A local building company wants to erect an 8-storey* condominium on Bruyère Street on a fifty-foot lot facing the Rideau River at Bordeleau Park. Claridge Homes already has quite a presence around the national capital but this would be the first such edifice in our own neighbourhood. It would also extend "below grade" to provide parking space for about 110 vehicles. Whether this underground car park would be within the river's flood plain or not hasn't yet been made clear.

It is the city's policy to allow the construction of modern "infill housing in mature neighbourhoods" whenever a reasonable site plan is submitted, in order to avoid too much new construction around the outskirts of the city (although that is tending to happen too).

Yesterday evening I was one of about sixty residents of Lowertown who turned up for a "Bruyère Street Rezoning Task Force" meeting about the possible development, which most people seemed to see as a threat.

Predictably, most of the neighbours weren't happy about the proposed "revitilisation" of our corner, especially as the plan is to demolish existing houses on the site after evicting the 16 families who currently live there. Before this actually happens, however, several stages have to be passed. The zoning amendment would come first, before the site plan is approved, and only after that would a building permit be granted. The city planning representative wouldn't commit herself as to what her department thinks of the proposal and our newly elected councillor wants "to work with all parties" over this issue, so no promises were made either way.

Some of what was said at the meeting:

"This is the most attractive spot anywhere in the city."

"Don't forget the heritage aspect. The houses to be demolished are of historical interest."

"Is this proposal a done deal, or are we going to fight it?"

"As far as the density criteria are concerned, what are we grappling with here? I like the idea of having new neighbours, but why has this thing got to be so high? It would set a precedent."

"How can we get its footprint reduced?"

"Since the neighbourhood came together to reclaim Bordeleau park, we have turned this neighbourhood around. Was this all for nothing?"

"The proposal is out of character ... a slap in the face of the community."

"It's incongruous with the neighbourhood and completely out of scale ... representing overdevelopment."

If the construction goes ahead the problems foreseen are to do with vibration, the cost of the services that will have to be upgraded, the infiltration of water from the river bed and the extra traffic. The new structure will throw a significant shadow over the park, dwarfing the neighbouring properties, especially because not much of a setback from the sidewalk is planned for its façade,


* British spelling is preferred in this blog; I've had dual British-Canadian citizenship since 2005

Guardians of the Ottawa River

On the Ottawa Riverkeeper website I linked yesterday* (expect it to pop up regularly in this blog), I've found a page about another writer who keeps an eye on our local rivers, Katherine Fletcher. The Riverkeepers have been around since 2000. The organisation itself publishes a blog and encourages interested people to get involved in its work.

Last summer our Diplomatic Hospitality group met a couple of representatives of the Riverkeeper team at a picnic in Britannia Bay, where a trolley bus used to stop at the park, bringing families from Ottawa to the beach for a day's outing. This was the last stop on the line. Under the roof of the former platform we spent a pleasant time there in our sunhats, sharing our lunch and then learning about the river.

Diplomatic Hospitality picnic, June 2010

* Thanks for the comment, Faith –– now it's a perfect storm because we're having an unusually hot and dry summer was a peculiar way of putting it indeed. I never noticed though, until you pointed it out. 

Under the ice

Re. yesterday's post, "How do you know," says my husband, "that the water is rushing along under there where you can't see it?"

Rideau River at the Hog's Back Falls, January 2011

"You can tell from where it breaks through," I remind him, "at the waterfalls."

Actually there's not as much water in the rivers as normal, this winter. Precipitation levels have been low and if this trend continues there'll be the same worries next summer as in 2010.

Schubert, Müller and the frozen Rideau

There's a cycle of twenty-four songs by Schubert, entitled Winterreise, meaning Winter Journey. The songs are settings of poems by Wilhelm Müller. Since we've been living in Ottawa the imagery in the songs has become very real to us because their lovesick narrator keeps describing a frozen river: its thick surface of ice and the water still rushing along underneath ... corresponding to the cold, hard numbness that conceals his broken heart! Here are three verses from Auf dem Flusse (On the River) which I'm translating rather freely:

Der du so lustig rauschtest,
Du heller, wilder Fluß,
Wie still bist du geworden,
Gibst keinen Scheidegruß.

You who surged so merrily, you bright, wild river, how quiet you have become, without a word of farewell.

Mit harter, starrer Rinde
Hast du dich überdeckt,
Liegst kalt und unbeweglich
Im Sande ausgestreckt.

You have covered yourself with an impenetrable crust, to lie cold and motionless, stretched out in the sand.
[...]

Mein Herz, in diesem Bache
Erkennst du nun dein Bild ?
Ob's unter seiner Rinde
Wohl auch so reißend schwillt ?

Doesn't my heart recognize an image of itself now, in this stream? Under its crust isn't there just such a raging torrent?

Evidence of beavers

Clicking on this picture (taken last Friday) will give you a closer look at the beaver's tooth marks on this tree standing in the ice on the south bank of the Ottawa River.  I thought that beavers hibernated, but apparently they do stay awake. According to my research they tow logs away before the onset of winter to store them under water and only leave their lodges during the cold weather to feed from their stored food supplies. These marks look recent though, as if the beaver had actually emerged in the dead of winter to attack the tree for the sake of its succulent upper branches.


This particular beaver was too ambitious, trying to bite off more than it could chew. I have never seen such a large tree with beaver damage before. Next to humans, beavers are the most destructive loggers in North America.

Snow falling

Today's view of the Rideau from the corner of Cathcart and Rose Streets, Ottawa

The roads are becoming hazardous; the parks by our bend in the Rideau River are getting a fresh coat of snow today. According to The Weather Network it feels like -18º out there just now, so I shall stay indoors.

Starry night over the Minto Bridges

    "Home!" said Pierre, and despite ten degrees of frost he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and inhaled the air with joy.
    It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty ill-lit streets, above the black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky.  

I remembered this passage from War and Peace, Tolstoy imagining Moscow's winter of 1812, as we crossed the Minto Bridges last night where the air felt equally cold and the stars looked bright. The new, eco-friendly (?) street lights are also very bright, casting long shadows of the metal bridge structure onto the white surface of the river. That's a winter phenomenon. The Minto Bridges after dark are a romantic place to be (in summer we sometimes see the moon reflected in the water there) offering a wider view of the cityscape and sky than from the streets. Last night we did a there-and-back walk to New Edinburgh so crossed them twice.

Warm front coming through today, a relatively warm front, that is, bringing snow.

Snowshoe morning

 It turned out to be a beautiful morning for our walk on snowshoes anticipated in Monday's post. Here are the pictures to prove it.

In the foreground of the first photo are two diplomats' wives on their way down to the river, with the Quebec bank in the distance and another group of diplomats and Canadians in the middle distance.

The second photo looking upstream shows the shadowy riverside trail (this bank faces north) with a hint of the Gatineau Hills on the horizon.

The third also shows the hills, with Carol trying out her new snowshoes on the frozen Ottawa itself; the river's very wide at this point.

Making snow

In the Jacques-Cartier Park on the north bank of the Ottawa River there isn't enough snow, so they're making some.

Winterlude 2008

A dozen of us went across to Gatineau to visit a friend who lives on the seventh floor of an appartment block overlooking this park––she also has a marvellous view of Parliament Hill and the other famous sights of the city––and so got a bird's eye view of the snow-making equipment in action, sending out steamy clouds of the white stuff.

As happens every year, snow hills are being created for Winterlude's "Snowflake Kingdom," in February, when visitors to the park will be able to have fun sliding down them at high speed.

Ducks

The geese may fly south, but the Rideau River's ducks stay in town for the winter, hanging out at the places where the flow is rapid and the water shallow. You can spot them in the river near Strathcona Park, near Mooney's Bay above the Hog's Back Falls and across the river from the Rideau Canoe Club's premises, and from a bus, as you cross the Transitway bridge between Lees and Hurdman stations.

How these warm-blooded creatures manage to bear the cold water is a miracle to me.

The Hog's Back

On Monday I was in a car that took me all the way along Colonel By Drive; at the southern end of that ride I went past the Hog's Back Falls, at the point where the Rideau Canal splits from the Rideau River, and caught a glimpse of them from the passenger seat. I always want to stop to take a closer look at these falls; they're less well known by tourists than are the Rideau Falls, some 10km downstream, but much loved by the citizens of Ottawa. Today, having been at a house within walking distance of the Hog's Back I made a special detour to visit them instead of jumping straight on the bus back to town.

The Hog's Back Park near the Falls is being "rehabilitated; the parking area has been closed for the last few months and the buildings fenced off. The construction work was started at the end of last summer and has been abandoned for the winter, but all I had to do on foot was follow the trail of footprints, skirting the fences to the lookout points where I managed to take some photos:

Getting out there

There are ski tracks, boot prints and paw prints all over our riverside parks where people and dogs have been enjoying themselves in the snow. The best way to get acclimatised to cold weather is to keep going out in it and Ottawans seem particularly good at this. The other night near the Minto Bridges we saw a very young baby cocooned in quilted wraps being pulled along on a sledge by his (her?) energetic father. This week, the Rideau Canal between Pretoria Bridge and Bank Street Bridge is open for skating again with many families out there, appreciating the good quality ice.

The air temperature wasn't particularly low yesterday, but away from the shelter of tall buildings or hillsides the strong wind made it feel chillier. There were some who took advantage of the wind at Britannia Bay on in the west end of town, to go kitesurfing on the frozen Ottawa River, as can be seen from a picture posted on the Weather Network's website. That's an activity more likely to keep your blood circulating than is the more static sport of ice-fishing, very popular in the national capital region all the same.

Diplomats and Canadians snowshoeing, January 2010

For six weeks, starting this week, the ladies of the Ottawa CFUW's Diplomatic Hospitality group host a series of Friday morning snow-shoeing outings for any diplomats and spouses of diplomats who are free to come and experience the Ottawa winter in this way. People from the Philippines, say, or Angola, for whom snow is an unfamiliar phenomenon indeed, are intrigued by the opportunity to do something like this during their posting. I've been a member of Diplomatic Hospitality (on the Canadian side) for nearly 14 years now, and haven't tired of participating yet. This Friday we're going to plod down the trail beside the Ottawa River near Blair Road and the Rockcliffe Parkway in the east end from which there are some beautiful views across to Upper Duck Island, Lower Duck Island and the Quebec side. My picture was taken at the same event this time last year.

The joining of rivers and canoe clubs

Since I live in close proximity to the Rideau River and the Ottawa River I'll be making regular references to both rivers in this blog. If you read Peter Ustinov's short story, The Frontiers of the Sea, you're gradually made aware that the sea has no frontiers; the world and its inhabitants are all one. Inland waterways can't be thought of as separate entities either. I sometimes stand above the Rideau Falls and imagine the water stretching without a break from here to the Gulf of St Lawrence, to the Atlantic, to Europe and beyond. I know I'm not the only one who does so.

Today we met three of our friends for lunch at the New Edinburgh Pub, sitting at a table beneath a black and white photo of members of the New Edinburgh Canoe Club, dated 1929. The NECC, when it amalgamated with the Ottawa Canoe Club became part of one of the oldest boat clubs in Canada. Known since 1965 as the ONEC––the Ottawa New Edinburgh Club. This is still in existence, as is its boathouse, nearly a hundred years old now, standing on stilts in the Ottawa River below the Rockcliffe Parkway.

No difference between the river and its banks

The snow is forecast to continue falling all weekend.

Last night we walked our usual circuit, down to the Minto Bridges, through the streets of New Edinburgh to Beechwood, then across the St Patrick's Street bridge, past the Chinese Embassy and through Bordeleau Park * back to our house. The wooden boards of the Minto Bridges creak under our feet as they always do under a certain temperature; I find it disconcerting. The snow on the river banks and river ice is now so smooth and white that it's impossible to tell where the margin is. It's beautiful there, under the trees.

My photo was taken last month in the late afternoon in similar conditions, but the dried grasses and flower stalks left behind from last summer are now beginning to disappear under smooth drifts.

* A neighbour at a Christmas party who told me she was working on a book about the history of Bordeleau Park. My husband cheekily refers to the park as Bordello Park, which, she says, is a thought that had also occurred to her while she was doing her research. Not so long ago, the police were called in to help clean up the park's image and the neighbourhood played its part in reclaiming the area, too.

Rideau

Rideau Falls from the air in winter

The Rideau River pours into the Ottawa River over the Rideau Falls like the curtain after which they were named when the explorer Champlain first saw them. I live on Cathcart Street, adjacent to the riverside park on the banks of the Rideau; the falls are a ten minute walk from our house. For some time I have been thinking that it would be fun to write about the way the river changes from week to week, month to month throughout the year, so this is the purpose of my blog.

In the first week of January the river near our house is usually frozen over with a solid layer of ice, although this year there are still a few thin patches in the centre. It's snowing today; earlier this week there was very little snow on top of the ice.